The Composition
Prokofiev's The Prodigal Son (L'enfant prodigue), Op. 46, was composed in 1928-29 as the last of three ballets created by Prokofiev for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. It was premiered on 21 May 1929 at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris, with choreography by George Balanchine, sets and costumes by Georges Rouault, and Serge Lifar in the title role. The production was a triumph and is remembered as one of the great achievements of the Ballets Russes's final years; Diaghilev died three months after the premiere, and the Ballets Russes dissolved shortly after.
The ballet is in three scenes and runs approximately thirty-five minutes. Prokofiev revised the score for publication in 1946 and extracted an orchestral suite (Op. 46bis) that is sometimes performed independently. The collaboration with Balanchine was one of the most productive early partnerships of the choreographer who would become the dominant figure in twentieth-century ballet; Balanchine revived the work with the New York City Ballet in 1950 and it has remained in the NYCB repertoire since.
Biblical Text
The ballet dramatizes the Parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15:11-32, the most psychologically complete and narratively rich of Jesus's parables. Luke's account follows the younger son's request for his share of the inheritance, his journey to a far country, his dissipation of his wealth in 'riotous living,' his reduction to feeding pigs (a detail that would have been particularly shocking to a Jewish audience, given the pig's status as an unclean animal), his 'coming to himself' and decision to return, his father's reception of him, and the older son's resentment.
Prokofiev's three scenes follow the parable's narrative arc precisely: Scene One shows the son's departure; Scene Two, titled 'In a Foreign Land,' depicts his life among companions who exploit and abandon him; Scene Three shows his return and his father's embrace. The famous final pas de deux - in which the Prodigal, too weak to stand, crawls across the stage to his father and collapses into his arms - is Balanchine's choreographic realization of Luke 15:20: 'But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.'
The parable's climactic lines are among the most psychologically precise in the New Testament. The son's 'coming to himself' (Luke 15:17) - his recognition, in the depths of degradation, of who he truly is and where he belongs - is the key moment, and Prokofiev marks it musically with the return of the opening theme of Scene One, transformed from confident departure to exhausted recognition. The father's speech to the older son - 'This brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found' (Luke 15:32) - does not appear in the ballet, which ends before the older son's arrival, concentrating entirely on the son's return and the father's mercy.
The Composer
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) wrote The Prodigal Son during his Paris years (1922-1936), a period of intense creative productivity during which he composed for Diaghilev, wrote several of his finest piano works, and developed the neo-classical idiom that distinguishes his mature style. His use of a biblical parable as the subject for a ballet was not driven by personal religious conviction - Prokofiev was not a practicing Christian - but by his recognition of the parable's psychological depth and dramatic potency, qualities that the spare, unsentimental precision of his neo-classical language was particularly suited to render.
His return to the Soviet Union in 1936 was one of the great tragedies of twentieth-century musical history: he apparently believed that the Soviet system would support his work, but the period 1936-1953 was marked by increasing constraint, the Zhdanov Doctrine (1948) that condemned his music as 'formalist' and forced public self-criticism, and the deterioration of his health. He died on 5 March 1953 - the same day as Stalin, a coincidence that initially prevented any public announcement of his death.
Musical Analysis
The score of The Prodigal Son is one of Prokofiev's most characteristic achievements in the neo-classical idiom: tonal but with sharp dissonances, melodically clear but rhythmically complex, emotionally expressive but without sentimentality. The opening scene establishes the son's confident, restless energy in a series of driving dances; the companions in Scene Two are characterized by sinuous, chromatic music that suggests seduction and corruption; and the return in Scene Three is marked by the transformation of the opening material - the same notes, but now sluggish, broken, exhausted.
The central pas de deux of the return is the ballet's musical and dramatic climax. Prokofiev sets the father's music in a broad, sustained melody over simple harmonies - a moment of unusual harmonic simplicity in a score that elsewhere moves through complex tonal regions - suggesting that the father's love is the one element in the work that does not require complexity, that is simply and completely given. The son's theme is transformed into a series of fragmented, searching phrases that gradually align with the father's broader melody as the embrace occurs.
Rouault's sets and costumes, with their bold colors and simplified figures drawn from the French Expressionist tradition, gave the production a visual character that matched Prokofiev's musical directness: both composer and designer stripped the parable of decorative sentiment and presented its psychological essentials.
Theological Content
The parable of the Prodigal Son has been interpreted across many different frameworks: as an allegory of the soul's fall and return to God (the Augustinian reading), as a lesson in unconditional parental love, as a critique of the older son's moral legalism, as a figure for Israel's exile and return, and as the foundational narrative of Christian soteriology - the lost being found, the dead being raised. Prokofiev's ballet concentrates on the psychological realism of the parable - the son's genuine suffering, the genuine recognition of self, the genuine vulnerability of the return - without allegorizing: the story is presented as a story about a specific human experience, and its theological depth is allowed to emerge from that specificity.
Performance History
The 1929 premiere was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. Balanchine's 1950 revival with the NYCB, with Jerome Robbins in the title role, established the work in the American repertoire. Subsequent productions have been staged by major ballet companies worldwide, and the work is now considered one of the essential twentieth-century narrative ballets alongside Stravinsky's Petrushka and Prokofiev's own Romeo and Juliet.
Legacy
The Prodigal Son represents the high point of Prokofiev's collaboration with Diaghilev and one of the most artistically successful realizations of a biblical narrative in twentieth-century music theater. Its achievement is precisely the neo-classical one: the stripping away of sentimentality and ornament to reveal the parable's psychological and spiritual essentials in the most direct possible theatrical and musical form. Balanchine's choreography, particularly the final crawling return and the father's embrace, has become one of the iconic images of twentieth-century dance.